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- The Mill on the Floss - 3/109 -

mother's accusation. Mrs. Tulliver, desiring her daughter to have a
curled crop, "like other folks's children," had had it cut too short
in front to be pushed behind the ears; and as it was usually straight
an hour after it had been taken out of paper, Maggie was incessantly
tossing her head to keep the dark, heavy locks out of her gleaming
black eyes,--an action which gave her very much the air of a small
Shetland pony.

"Oh, dear, oh, dear, Maggie, what are you thinkin'of, to throw your
bonnet down there? Take it upstairs, there's a good gell, an' let your
hair be brushed, an' put your other pinafore on, an' change your
shoes, do, for shame; an' come an' go on with your patchwork, like a
little lady."

"Oh, mother," said Maggie, in a vehemently cross tone, "I don't _want_
to do my patchwork."

"What! not your pretty patchwork, to make a counterpane for your aunt
Glegg?"

"It's foolish work," said Maggie, with a toss of her mane,--"tearing
things to pieces to sew 'em together again. And I don't want to do
anything for my aunt Glegg. I don't like her."

Exit Maggie, dragging her bonnet by the string, while Mr. Tulliver
laughs audibly.

"I wonder at you, as you'll laugh at her, Mr. Tulliver," said the
mother, with feeble fretfulness in her tone. "You encourage her i'
naughtiness. An' her aunts will have it as it's me spoils her."

Mrs. Tulliver was what is called a good-tempered person,--never cried,
when she was a baby, on any slighter ground than hunger and pins; and
from the cradle upward had been healthy, fair, plump, and dull-witted;
in short, the flower of her family for beauty and amiability. But milk
and mildness are not the best things for keeping, and when they turn
only a little sour, they may disagree with young stomachs seriously. I
have often wondered whether those early Madonnas of Raphael, with the
blond faces and somewhat stupid expression, kept their placidity
undisturbed when their strong-limbed, strong-willed boys got a little
too old to do without clothing. I think they must have been given to
feeble remonstrance, getting more and more peevish as it became more
and more ineffectual.

Chapter III

Mr. Riley Gives His Advice Concerning a School for Tom

The gentleman in the ample white cravat and shirt-frill, taking his
brandy-and-water so pleasantly with his good friend Tulliver, is Mr.
Riley, a gentleman with a waxen complexion and fat hands, rather
highly educated for an auctioneer and appraiser, but large-hearted
enough to show a great deal of _bonhomie_ toward simple country
acquaintances of hospitable habits. Mr. Riley spoke of such
acquaintances kindly as "people of the old school."

The conversation had come to a pause. Mr. Tulliver, not without a
particular reason, had abstained from a seventh recital of the cool
retort by which Riley had shown himself too many for Dix, and how
Wakem had had his comb cut for once in his life, now the business of
the dam had been settled by arbitration, and how there never would
have been any dispute at all about the height of water if everybody
was what they should be, and Old Harry hadn't made the lawyers.

Mr. Tulliver was, on the whole, a man of safe traditional opinions;
but on one or two points he had trusted to his unassisted intellect,
and had arrived at several questionable conclusions; amongst the rest,
that rats, weevils, and lawyers were created by Old Harry. Unhappily
he had no one to tell him that this was rampant Manichaeism, else he
might have seen his error. But to-day it was clear that the good
principle was triumphant: this affair of the water-power had been a
tangled business somehow, for all it seemed--look at it one way--as
plain as water's water; but, big a puzzle as it was, it hadn't got the
better of Riley. Mr. Tulliver took his brandy-and-water a little
stronger than usual, and, for a man who might be supposed to have a
few hundreds lying idle at his banker's, was rather incautiously open
in expressing his high estimate of his friend's business talents.

But the dam was a subject of conversation that would keep; it could
always be taken up again at the same point, and exactly in the same
condition; and there was another subject, as you know, on which Mr.
Tulliver was in pressing want of Mr. Riley's advice. This was his
particular reason for remaining silent for a short space after his
last draught, and rubbing his knees in a meditative manner. He was not
a man to make an abrupt transition. This was a puzzling world, as he
often said, and if you drive your wagon in a hurry, you may light on
an awkward corner. Mr. Riley, meanwhile, was not impatient. Why should
he be? Even Hotspur, one would think, must have been patient in his
slippers on a warm hearth, taking copious snuff, and sipping
gratuitous brandy-and-water.

"There's a thing I've got i' my head," said Mr. Tulliver at last, in
rather a lower tone than usual, as he turned his head and looked
steadfastly at his companion.

"Ah!" said Mr. Riley, in a tone of mild interest. He was a man with
heavy waxen eyelids and high-arched eyebrows, looking exactly the same
under all circumstances. This immovability of face, and the habit of
taking a pinch of snuff before he gave an answer, made him trebly
oracular to Mr. Tulliver.

"It's a very particular thing," he went on; "it's about my boy Tom."

At the sound of this name, Maggie, who was seated on a low stool close
by the fire, with a large book open on her lap, shook her heavy hair
back and looked up eagerly. There were few sounds that roused Maggie
when she was dreaming over her book, but Tom's name served as well as
the shrillest whistle; in an instant she was on the watch, with
gleaming eyes, like a Skye terrier suspecting mischief, or at all
events determined to fly at any one who threatened it toward Tom.

"You see, I want to put him to a new school at Midsummer," said Mr.
Tulliver; "he's comin' away from the 'cademy at Lady-day, an' I shall
let him run loose for a quarter; but after that I want to send him to
a downright good school, where they'll make a scholard of him."

"Well," said Mr. Riley, "there's no greater advantage you can give him
than a good education. Not," he added, with polite significance,--"not
that a man can't be an excellent miller and farmer, and a shrewd,
sensible fellow into the bargain, without much help from the
schoolmaster."

"I believe you," said Mr. Tulliver, winking, and turning his head on
one side; "but that's where it is. I don't _mean_ Tom to be a miller
and farmer. I see no fun i' that. Why, if I made him a miller an'
farmer, he'd be expectin' to take to the mill an' the land, an'
a-hinting at me as it was time for me to lay by an' think o' my latter
end. Nay, nay, I've seen enough o' that wi' sons. I'll never pull my
coat off before I go to bed. I shall give Tom an eddication an' put
him to a business, as he may make a nest for himself, an' not want to
push me out o' mine. Pretty well if he gets it when I'm dead an' gone.
I sha'n't be put off wi' spoon-meat afore I've lost my teeth."

This was evidently a point on which Mr. Tulliver felt strongly; and
the impetus which had given unusual rapidity and emphasis to his
speech showed itself still unexhausted for some minutes afterward in a
defiant motion of the head from side to side, and an occasional "Nay,
nay," like a subsiding growl.

These angry symptoms were keenly observed by Maggie, and cut her to
the quick. Tom, it appeared, was supposed capable of turning his
father out of doors, and of making the future in some way tragic by
his wickedness. This was not to be borne; and Maggie jumped up from
her stool, forgetting all about her heavy book, which fell with a bang
within the fender, and going up between her father's knees, said, in a
half-crying, half-indignant voice,--

"Father, Tom wouldn't be naughty to you ever; I know he wouldn't."

Mrs. Tulliver was out of the room superintending a choice supper-dish,
and Mr. Tulliver's heart was touched; so Maggie was not scolded about
the book. Mr. Riley quietly picked it up and looked at it, while the
father laughed, with a certain tenderness in his hard-lined face, and
patted his little girl on the back, and then held her hands and kept
her between his knees.

"What! they mustn't say any harm o' Tom, eh?" said Mr. Tulliver,
looking at Maggie with a twinkling eye. Then, in a lower voice,
turning to Mr. Riley, as though Maggie couldn't hear, "She understands
what one's talking about so as never was. And you should hear her
read,--straight off, as if she knowed it all beforehand. And allays at
her book! But it's bad--it's bad," Mr. Tulliver added sadly, checking
this blamable exultation. "A woman's no business wi' being so clever;
it'll turn to trouble, I doubt. But bless you!"--here the exultation
was clearly recovering the mastery,--"she'll read the books and
understand 'em better nor half the folks as are growed up."

Maggie's cheeks began to flush with triumphant excitement. She thought
Mr. Riley would have a respect for her now; it had been evident that
he thought nothing of her before.

Mr. Riley was turning over the leaves of the book, and she could make
nothing of his face, with its high-arched eyebrows; but he presently
looked at her, and said,--

"Come, come and tell me something about this book; here are some
pictures,--I want to know what they mean."

Maggie, with deepening color, went without hesitation to Mr. Riley's
elbow and looked over the book, eagerly seizing one corner, and
tossing back her mane, while she said,--

"Oh, I'll tell you what that means. It's a dreadful picture, isn't it?
But I can't help looking at it. That old woman in the water's a
witch,--they've put her in to find out whether she's a witch or no;
and if she swims she's a witch, and if she's drowned--and killed, you
know--she's innocent, and not a witch, but only a poor silly old
woman. But what good would it do her then, you know, when she was
drowned? Only, I suppose, she'd go to heaven, and God would make it up
to her. And this dreadful blacksmith with his arms akimbo,
laughing,--oh, isn't he ugly?--I'll tell you what he is. He's the
Devil _really_" (here Maggie's voice became louder and more emphatic),
"and not a right blacksmith; for the Devil takes the shape of wicked
men, and walks about and sets people doing wicked things, and he's
oftener in the shape of a bad man than any other, because, you know,
if people saw he was the Devil, and he roared at 'em, they'd run away,
and he couldn't make 'em do what he pleased."